This section provides background information related to the present disclosure which is not necessarily prior art.
Hotels have people check in from all walks of life. Some hotel guests bring additional uninvited/unwanted guests with them that stay beyond check out time, such as bedbugs, among other insects. Cities with large numbers of hotel rooms oftentimes report bedbug infestations, such as Las Vegas, New York City, and Hawaii. The bedbugs arrive on a few hotel guests or their luggage and then the environment of the hotel allows the bedbugs to thrive. The bedbugs affect hotels of all star levels.
In recent years, hotels have fought the bedbugs in various ways. One prior art method of fighting bedbugs involves heated air. The heated air raises the space temperature high enough to kill off the bedbugs. The heated air is readily created by direct fired heaters, propane heaters or burners. Such heaters are presently used at construction sites and along the sidelines at wintry professional football games. The heaters generally burn propane and a fan drives air over the burner for heating. But exterminators may use heated air to eliminate bedbugs, though the exterminators are usually not allowed to bring propane tanks into buildings due to fire and building codes.
Additionally, hotel general managers and property owners seek to handle the bedbug infestation highly discretely and very quietly. The propane heaters move the heated air through a flexible duct system to reach the infested space. But flexible ducts running up the stairs and down the corridors in five star hotels are just not permitted. Additionally, re-circulating air from a direct fired heater within an infested space or nearby hallway also is not allowed because the combustion products can rise to unsafe levels rapidly.
In order to avoid the fire and building code limits and direct fired heaters, hotels commonly attack bedbug infestations by stripping a room of its furnishings down to the structure, often bare concrete. This extreme method kills off a bedbug infestation, but a hotel loses room night revenue and incurs the demolition and re-fitting costs. Indeed, this method may cost over $30,000 (USD) per room.
Exterminating contractors presently fight bedbugs with various systems, including direct fired heaters coupled with flexible ducts to deliver heated air to an infested space. The heaters may be gas-fired salamanders in conjunction with flexible ducts that deliver hot air into a room or other part of a building, enclosure, container or structure, to exterminate bedbugs therein.
When generating heat to kill off an infestation of unwanted insects, small mammals or other pests, an infra-red heating system can serve as the source of the heat. Infra-red heat is generally classified as low intensity (lower temperature and longer wavelength) or high intensity (higher temperature and shorter wavelength) based on the temperature output of the black body. High intensity is more reflective of the energy produced with light colored walls returning it to the space for absorption by darker colored objects. Low intensity tends to have more of its energy absorbed into a wall even with light colored paint coatings. The absorbed energy then is conducted to the wall cavity. In a bug-infested wall, the temperature inside the wall must rise to the killing temperature. The low intensity infra-red heat serves that purpose well. The walls subjected to the infra-red heating also radiate heat back to the space and raise the air temperature accordingly.
It has been reported in the prior art that temperatures as low as 115° F. can be lethal to bedbugs. But the exposure time to actually achieve the kill can approach 10 hours. On the other hand, bedbug exposure to a temperature of 140° F. can accomplish the kill within a half hour. Other pests, such as scorpions, require higher temperature profiles to reach the lethal temperature exposure.
Exterminators that utilize heat as a means to eradicate a pest infestation have been known to leave the jobsite after the equipment has been set up and the heating cycle has begun, thereby, leaving the system unmanned in order to minimize (or at least reduce) labor expenses. By not continuously monitoring the process, they have no way to know whether any malfunctions (e.g., power interruptions) occurred during their absence. Therefore, they tend to extend the cycle time well beyond what is needed and may occasionally have to repeat the treatment if something did occur. Both conditions needlessly waste energy and other resources.